In recognising the importance of coaches’ tactical content knowledge, in this study, I look at how coaches generate knowledge to coach through principles of play.
Coaches are seen as ongoing learners who are able to acquire and generate tactical content knowledge, and then, as teachers, transform that knowledge into pedagogical tactical content knowledge. The concept of coaching through Principles of Play underpins coaches’ tactical content knowledge. As early as in the 1960s, literature already referred to Principles of Play. Literature shows that both sports coaches and PE teachers who coach or teach through a tactical or game centred approach, may frame their tactical knowledge within the concept of principles of play.
A theoretical framework was composed of; Shulman’s Model of Pedagogical Reasoning and Action, Bruner’s A Theory of Instruction and Tactical Periodization. Together with the Categories of Knowledge, this theoretical framework made it possible to initiate a conceptualisation of the Coaches’ Process of Knowledge Generation for Coaching through Principles of Play.
Qualitative Content Analysis on the five sources selected to compose the theoretical framework led to the first level conceptualisation. This was further populated with the intervention of ten expert international soccer coaches, who were interviewed and asked to analytically criticise, from their point of view, the first version of this conceptualisation. Qualitative Content Analysis of these interviews led to the second level conceptualization of this process.
The final conceptualisation presented in this study demonstrates how a process of knowledge generation to coach through principles of play needs to be contextualised through Scrutiny of the Environment, Conceptualisation, Acquisition of Knowledge, Transformation of Knowledge, Dissemination of Knowledge make the five outer components which all interact with the central component Regeneration of Knowledge.
